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Old Masters and 19th Century Art
|
- Sale 6380
Live
| Philadelphia
Nov 4 | 12:00 PM EST
Live
| Philadelphia
Sale 6380
| Philadelphia
| Philadelphia
Estimate$5,000 – $7,000
Provenance:
The Fine Art Society, London, UK.
Stuart Pivar, New York, by 1976.
Exhibited:
Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum, The Pre-Raphaelite Era, 1848-1914, April 12 - June 6, 1976, no. 4-28, pp. 80-81, illus.
Lot Note:
Shields was a Manchester painter, watercolorist, and decorator whose artistic career was determined when he saw the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. He later became a close friend of both Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, although his work, which is strongly realistic and religious in outlook, perhaps comes closer to Holman Hunt than any other Pre-Raphaelite artist. Although he often worked in watercolor and for many years exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society, his two most substantial commissions were mural decorations for the Chapel of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, seat of the Dukes of Westminster, and the Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater Road.
This present oil probably relates to the mural at the Chapel of the Ascension. The chapel was commissioned by Mrs. Russell Gurney, widow of the Recorder of London, in the hope that it would provide a sanctuary for meditation away from the hubbub of nearby Marble Arch. The chapel was designed by Herbert Horne in 1887 and although construction began in 1890, legal disputes ensured that it was not completed until 1910. Shields chose to decorate the interior with the principle scenes of Christ's Life and visited Italy in 1889 to gather material for the sequence. The chapel in consequence carried strong echoes of Giotto's fresco cycles in Assissi and Padua. It was destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War.
Framed: 55 1/4 x 32 3/4 x 3 in.
Minor deposits of surface dirt and dust; canvas is unlined; faint stretcher bar marks around image perimeter; network of craquelures throughout, mostly visible only under raking light; one loss to the lower left edges of the canvas, approximately 1 1/2 inches in length, with the canvas margin further separated from the main canvas below this, accompanied by small paint losses; one small paint loss in the upper left corner; one pinpoint hole in the center right; pinpoint white paint flecks along the upper left edge; abrasions along all edges. Under UV light: inpainting along the edges and on the stretcher in the area of the canvas loss; one small paint loss in the center, within the white of the woman's robes; possible inpainting to the lower right folds of the robe; areas of the red pigment within the robe fluoresce but do not appear to be inpainting. Additional images available upon request.
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